[tkahn6]

So here's something that just happened 5 minutes ago.

A girl I've been snapchatting with texted me and asked why the Poke app is just like snapchat. I asked her if it was better, and she said 'I haven't used it much, but it looks much better', and now we're using it instead of snapchat.

Pretty fascinating. She downloaded the app because they're advertising it on their mobile app.

[dcope]

That doesn't surprise me too much. Visually, the Poke app does look much more appealing however the big win is obviously the Facebook integration. Snapchat requires you to find friends by their phone number or by manually entering their username. The Poke application on the other hand allows you instant access to your entire friends list. In my opinion, the Poke app will obliterate Snapchat because of this.

[capsule_toy]

I have a phone number for everyone I want to snapchat with, but a couple of those people are not on Facebook. I can't imagine someone not having a smartphone in my demographic but not having FB, while rare, does happen.

[dcope]

Sure, but that requires users typing in their phone number and having Snapchat send a text to verify. I don't know about your friends, but I know for sure mine would not do that. In my opinion, Facebook is much more reputable than Snapchat.

[loceng]

They possibly knew she used Snapchat, too.

[gregcohn]

this is the most important comment on this issue I've seen in a while. The fact is not just the fb learns which apps to clone; they learn who to promote the clones to AND can drive distribution in a way no one else, other than twitter, possibly can.

that said, at some point there's a tradeoff between being a marketplace for 3rd-party apps and seeking to win with your own proprietary apps across the board.